Eileen Gu is just 18. Born and raised in California, Gu competes for her mother’s native China, where she hopes to win three gold medals: in halfpipe, slopestyle and massive air.
Gu’s relationship to fear is evolving. She thinks about it so much. She keeps a diary, and a few of her handwritten entries, she said, are dedicated to the topic of fear, in all its forms.
On the request of The Recent York Times, Gu wrote down her thoughts on fear — how she views it, how she manages it, how she hopes to beat it.
Essay by Eileen Gu
For the last 10 of my 18 years, I’ve pursued a tumultuous love affair with fear. I’m an expert freeskier, and twin-tipped skis, 22-foot halfpipes and double-cork rotations are my essential sources of adrenaline, the truly addictive core of utmost sports.
Like all bewitching lovers (not less than those within the novels I read, for lack of real-world experience), this better half could be … mercurial. “Fear” is actually an umbrella term for 3 distinct sensations: excitement, uncertainty, and pressure. I’ve learned that the nuanced indicators of every of those feelings could be instrumental to success when recognized and positively leveraged, and harbingers of injury when ignored.
Though it’s easy to label extreme sport athletes as fearless or capricious, the countless hours I’ve spent visualizing tricks and practicing them in foam pits (foam. particles. in every single place) and on airbags (think giant Slip ’N Slide) suggest otherwise. It’s biologically counterintuitive for us to position ourselves in positions of risk, and while we make every effort to physically prepare, no amount of metaphorically safety-netted practice can equate to the unforgiving snow slope that rushes up to satisfy us after a steep kicker launches us into the air. As a substitute of ignoring fear, we construct unique relationships with it by developing a profound sense of self-awareness and making deliberate risk assessments.
The work begins with visualization. Before I attempt a latest trick, I feel a tightening high in my chest, between the bottom of my throat and the highest of my diaphragm. I take a deep breath and shut my eyes. As I ascend the gargantuan takeoff ramp, I imagine extending my legs to maximise lift. Then I picture twisting my upper body in the wrong way I intend to spin, generating torque before I allow it to snap back the opposite way.
Now, in my mind, I’m airborne. I see the backside of the takeoff immediately, then my flip draws my vision to the cloudless sky above me. My ears register the wind as a type of song, every 360-degree rotation providing the beat to the music of my motion. As my feet come under me halfway through, I spot the landing for the briefest of moments before I pull my body into the second flip. I imagine my legs swinging under me as I return to a forward-facing position and meet the bottom with my weight within the front of my boots. 1440 degrees. I smile. Then I open my eyes.
Within the split second following my visualization, the knot in my chest flutters and spreads — those famous butterflies reaching their final stage of metamorphosis. Excitement, the kid of adrenaline, my true love and addiction. That tantalizingly precarious balance between confidence in my ability to execute the trick safely and excitement for the unpredictable experience to come back. I’ve heard this state called “the zone,” which is indeed where I used to be once I became the primary female skier in history to land the double cork 1440 last fall.
It doesn’t take much, unfortunately, for uncertainty to override confidence. Imperfect preparation moistens my palms, pushes that tight spot down into my stomach and makes each breath shallower than the last. The sensation isn’t panic, but something like dread. Danger! cries every evolutionary instinct. If I should decide to look past this safety mechanism, my body may act autonomously within the air, twisting out of the rotation and forcing me to brace for impact out of fear that full commitment to the trick may end in disaster. Every freeskier’s goal is to acknowledge the minute differences between excitement and uncertainty with the intention to maximize performance while minimizing the chance of injury.
Finally, there’s pressure, an energy source that could be wielded in some ways. One’s experience of pressure — by far essentially the most subjective facet of “fear” — is affected by personal experiences and perspectives. Expectations of family and friends, a competitive streak, and even sponsorship opportunities can provide the scaffolding for a high-pressure environment. Pressure is usually a positive force for competitors who leverage it to rise to the occasion, but it might also single-handedly dictate competitive failure.
But whether athletes alleviate or compound their innate desire to “prove themselves” depends largely on confidence. As I enter my early maturity, I’m pleased with the work I’ve done to deal with pressure by bolstering my self-esteem and minimizing my need for external validation. I concentrate on gratitude, perspective, and on the enjoyment this sport brings me, no matter whether I’m alone or in front of a worldwide TV audience. Though my views of myself and the world are consistently evolving, one thing is for certain: irrespective of how much time passes, I’ll all the time be a hopeless romantic in the case of fear.